Weekly Batch

I'm almost halfway through the week and this is about typical of my usual output.  Since Sunday I've been working on two shoulderstraps and a pouch and now they're all ready to head out.  The pouch is a standard spaceman but the shoulderstraps are a little neat.  One of them has a monogram which I honestly haven't figured out for myself.  The other is destined to carry a fellow's custom case of Marvel Legendary cards.  I'm sure ya'll can guess which is which. =)

I've got another shoulderstrap or two to crank out this week and I'm chatting with clients about a couple of interesting projects.  In the meantime, the Missus and I have picked up our tickets to PAX South 2016 and now we just have to figure out what we want to cosplay as...

MSF Range Card Holster

This is my third Range Card Holster and was meant to be a Christmas present for one of the MSF's instructors.  We used the same basic pattern I'd initially developed and added a placard of the MSF's logo.  I'd used paper to transfer the design onto the leather but, as sometimes happens with paper, it warped a bit during the transfer so some of the lettering wound up a bit of a slant.  I didn't even notice until I was staining the thing but it's probably another reason to be 3D printing tapoffs rather than relying on paper transfers.

Paisley Guitar Strap

I've made a few of these so this time the challenge was in the timing.  The guitar strap was meant as a birthday present and with shipping time and other orders under consideration it was going to be close.  And close it was!  I put the final touches on at 17:47 and had it packaged and at the post office 10 minutes later, just before the post closed for the day.  So the picture might not be the best but this is at least the third paisley guitar strap on the blog so I reckon there's a few other examples.

Motorcycle Sit-upon

This was another commission for my brother-in-law's motorcycle following the nicely successive toolbox earlier this summer.  The idea was to add some padding to his motorcycle's seat and eventually we figured the best plan was to wrap some foam in leather and cinch it down using velcro straps.  He supplied the foam (which I gather began as a yoga mat) and I coerced some latigo into a housing.  That was particularly tedious since I was stitching through the foam itself.  Without access to all sides of the seam I had to find the underside of the holes by touch alone.  So the inner seam (which holds the top to the walls) took me about a day and a half.  The outer seam (through the lid, foam, and the bottom of the walls) took 8 days to finish.  Since it was a longer-term project I endulged in some Netflix whilst doing most of the stitching so put another way it took 4 action movies, the entire first season of Gothlam, and the first third of "Boneshaker" (a steampunk audiobook) to finish all that stitching.

I haven't heard back for how the seat rides just yet but it looks like it fits pretty swell.

League of Legends Cosplay

This was another large order for a video game cosplayer.  This fellow was looking to cosplay a character from League of Legends which I'm vaguely familiar with, but not exactly up to date on.  So if the particular character has a name I'm not aware of it.  For our purposes the important bit were the three pouches and the two bandoleers.  The client will be building the rest of the get-up himself but that still left me with a fair amount of work.

We used a bit of photogammetry and scaling to figure out all the right dimensions.  This still required a fair bit of guess work since we weren't sure how bulky the final outfit would be.  And then there was the limitation of the available hardware.  The bandoleers in the photos seem to be about 4" wide, but the largest commercially available buckle we could find was 2.5".  We figured the bandoleers needed to be 72" long, which is a lot to cut from one hide.  That meant they'd need some joints, but fortunately the second image gave us an idea of what those joints should look like.

The pouches were relatively simple compared to the bandoleers.  I modified my usual pattern to place the seams where they seem to be in the pictures.  I then 3D printed the lips of the lids so that they would interlock with the leather.  They're held in place with some glue but, frankly, the joining between front, leather, and back is so solid that I suspect tension might have been enough.

The bandoleers were a bit trickier.  They seem to have a raised edging which I was hoping to duplicate by gluing on a 1/4" strip of leather around the edge.  I underestimated how impervious stoned leather is to glue though and wound up having to switch to veg-tan instead.  The end result seems to have come out pretty well.  The stain's rather close to the stoned leather and with only a light coat of finish there isn't that big a difference in gloss.

Another week, another shoulder strap

I've gotten out of the habit of making blog entries for the more routine orders, but it's been awhile since I made a post and the order I'm working on is going to be awhile yet.  Once it's finished I'll be writing a blurb all about it, but in the meantime here's a customized shoulderstrap!

Action Shots: Lara Croft Cosplay

The client who ordered the Lara Croft backpack was awesome enough to send me some pictures she took at DragonCon.  That cosplay sure seems to have come out pretty awesomely!  Well done!